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26th November, 2009. I was in York Minster yesterday – before delivering a lecture at York St. John University (to be posted here later). This is a report of an inspiring visit to the glorious York Minster with Cannon Dr. Jonathan Draper. Report from the excellent ‘York Press’ ……Like the ‘world expert’ bit…… ” 25th November, 2009 Dear patient readers of this blog…please find below my latest Huff Post post. Some may wonder why I cheered when White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel announced that the president plans to cut the deficit, because he “does not want to keep on adding to the debt.” It’s no
22nd November, 2009 Have just left a great event in Manchester, where about 500 students gathered to sharpen up their campaigning on climate change – under the banner of ‘People and Planet’. Ian Leggett, the organisation’s director, reminded us that Barclays Bank still has a great big hole in its demographic – all those students who, back in the 1980s, refused to bank with Barclays because of their activities in funding apartheid. Today the students have a fresh target in their sights. They have pulled together a really smart campaign aimed at a bank in which we British citizens/taxpayers now have an 84% stake – after our government invested £56 billion in bailing out the biggest corporate failure in the history of capitalism. I refer of course to the Royal Bank of Scotland. The TUC has helpfully produced a video of today’s conference with yours truly, Gillian Tett of the Financial Times, Dave Prentis, General Secretary of UNISON, and John Kay, also a columnist on the Financial Times. It was a truly stimulating session, and you can watch it here. http://www.touchstoneblog.org.uk/2009/11/video-beyond-crisis-what-challenges-and-opportunities-lie-ahead-for-the-uk-economy I published this on the Huffington Post on 11th November, 2009. In William Hogarth’s famous engraving of 1721, the world of finance, corrupted by the phantom of the South Sea Bubble, is cruelly satirised. To represent market cheerleaders, a goat sits astride a spinning carousel and asks: ‘who will ride?” Lured by this charlatan, investors crowd on to the shaky, but thrilling merry-go-round. In another corner a winged devil with a scythe throws chunks of Fortune’s body to a greedy crowd. And in the right hand corner – ‘trade lies dead’.
Today — as global trade lies dead, as unemployment rises, as wages and incomes plummet, as US consumption (70% of US GDP) and investment falls — share prices zoom upwards and commodity prices rock. According to Fortune magazine, the stock market climb of these last few months is the fastest on record. By November, the S&P 500 had surged by 62 percent to 1,093.08 after sinking to a 12-year low in March. |
In the September 2003 edition of openDemocracy I wrote: 
Click here to read the full story in openDemocracy BOOKS:
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